The present invention relates to furniture, particularly to items such as pedestal bases for chairs. Such pedestal bases include a central hub and radiating arms or legs. These arms are typically formed of tubular steel stock and the openings at the end of the arms must somehow be covered.
One typical way of covering these openings is to weld an end cap onto the arms. The weld surface is sanded and the entire base arm is then chrome plated. Such a procedure is, of course, fairly expensive.
To obviate this expense, some manufacturers have made molded plastic plugs. These molded plastic members are simply inserted into the ends of the base arms. While such an approach is inexpensive, the plugs have a tendency to fall out with continued use of the product and accordingly, this approach is not considered desirable by quality manufacturers.
One plastic plug which does not readily fall out is one that is not only a plug member, but also includes an integrally molded pintle receiving socket. Normally, the base arm of the pedestal base includes a steel tubular member welded to the end of the arm and extending generally laterally therefrom. The short tubular member is a pintle receiving socket which receives the pintle of a castor. When the castor pintle is integrally molded into the plastic end cap or plug, the need for a welded on pintle socket is eliminated. One simply provides a hole in the bottom surface of the base arm and after the plastic end cap is in place, the pintle is inserted through the hole and into the molded in pintle socket.
One problem with this approach is that the plastic pintle socket tends to wear with continued use and there is a tendency for the castors to fall out after some time. Also, assembly is somewhat complicated in that one has to be sure that the pintle socket in the end cap and the hole through which the castor pintle must extend are properly aligned when one inserts the castor pintle.